Our street was like a WAR ZONE when a mystery power surge ripped through 750 homes and I lost £10k
LOCALS were shocked when a massive power surge fried computers, exploded light bulbs and blew televisions up.
More than 750 homes were plunged into darkness as a power line fault triggered chaos with traffic lights failing and street lamps popping “like bombs”.
One resident told how his Alexa blew off the wall and his burglar alarm “exploded” – he added: “It’s like a war zone.”
The first signs there was a problem in Grimsby, North East Lincs, in the early hours of Wednesday morning came when the street lights began getting brighter and brighter.
They then began exploding and moments later thousands of personal electrical items in hundreds of homes were also destroyed.
Retired bus driver Alan Brown, 72, said: “There was a big bang which woke my daughter up.
“She came running through to tell me that something was happening in the street.
“A short time later a fire engine arrived because one of the houses was full of smoke when the television was destroyed.
“Lots of people were coming out of their homes and then engineers began descending. It was chaos.
“Our boiler went off because the circuit board was destroyed but we got away quite lightly, nothing else was broken.
“Some people have lost everything. One neighbour came home from holiday yesterday to find his television, washing machine and cooker all wrecked.
“This is going to cost Northern Powergrid a fortune.
“There were engineers all over the place through the day and one of them told me that it must have been a hell of a surge.”
In total 760 homes were affected in the west of the town.
Another resident said: “We noticed something was up in the early hours when the street lights got brighter and brighter.
“Then they started smoking and they popped like bombs going off.
“Every electrical item in our homes has been blown to bits – the house alarm, the telly, the boiler. They’re all knackered.
“The place is crawling with engineers and loss adjustors. I reckon I’ve had £10,000 worth of equipment wrecked.
“They’re looking at a bill of hundreds of thousands.
“This is completely unprecedented. It’s a major incident.”
Northern Powergrid posted a letter through the doors of those affected which revealed that a “fault caused excess voltage to be generated on our electricity network.”
It added that the company will repair or replace damaged items and said: “We do regret any inconvenience caused.”